Convincing Your CEO Of Marketing ROI
Darren Westall
March 15, 2021
Marketing
The stats are everywhere. All it takes is a quick Google search to find out how marketing can improve a company’s ROI, and why investing in marketing shouldn’t be an option anymore – it’s imperative to business growth.
However, a lot of marketers that have worked in-house at a recruitment company will know – convincing the CEO to invest more in marketing is not an easy task.
Invest in more admin staff? Sure. Repaint the office? Absolutely. Plan a company trip to the USA as a sales incentive? No problem.
Invest in a new website, or increase the PPC budget?
…tumbleweed.
Personal branding impacts marketing ROI
We’ve previously discussed the importance of building your personal brand, but this doesn’t just apply to individual recruiters – it also applies to your overall business. Audiences need to be able to identify with a person or organisation in order to be invested enough to find out more about a product or service.
In order for your marketing content to be able to reach the right people at the right time, you need to have a budget in place. Without knowing how much you are going to be able to spend on paid promotions, you won’t know the potential reach it’s going to have – which is exactly the type of information you need to give to your CEO.
Furthermore, if you’re looking for an increase in budget for bigger investments such as a website or more marketing employees, you’re going to need to demonstrate the alternative in numbers. Without stats and figures, it’s unlikely CEOs will go for it.
Smarketing is more than a buzzword
One topic that is likely to hit home with a CEO in a recruitment business is how marketing can, and will, improve sales. Put together a document, whether it’s a short Word doc full of stats or a full presentation of marketing analytics, to show the benefits of the marketing and sales teams working together.
The best way to do this is to use a few examples of:
- Your own campaigns that have generated leads for the sales team, and
- Examples of campaigns from other businesses that have high engagement.
Even if you don’t have specific stats for the external examples, demonstrating how marketing improves sales even in a top-level way will gain their interest, at the very least.
Spell it out
One thing marketers know is that there are countless terms, phrases, names and buzzwords flying around in the marketing industry. SEO, PPC, CRO, UI, UX, CX – you name it, and there’s probably an abbreviation for it.
Even though marketers might be well versed in the marketing dictionary, that doesn’t mean your CEO is going to know what you’re talking about. Even if they nod along when you’re speaking, and it seems like they’re getting to grips with what you’re trying to explain – doesn’t mean that they actually understand it.
Without being patronising, you need to spell it out for them. Avoid all jargon and acronyms – put it in the simplest terms possible so they understand what you are referring to. The key is, with each point you make, refer back to how this will increase ROI – if they know it’s not going to cost them more money, they’ll be all ears.
Track revenue attribution
Ensuring that your marketing plans and how you will measure your results are in place means you can also begin to track your revenue attribution. This means you’ll have to list out everything you can possibly think of that leads a buyer to the point of purchase – or, in recruitment terms, leads a candidate or client to fill in the relevant form on your website. When you have all this listed in front of you, you’ll be able to give your marketing tactics individual values for the role that they played in your funnel.
It’s not always completely straightforward when you’re trying to determine how much credit to give to each marketing tactic – the question “how long is a piece of string?” comes to mind. Start off by giving an educated guess using the traditional attribution models, and as you go along, use your own data to update each metric.
Once you have the relevant data to put in front of the CEO and show specifically how and where marketing ROI will contribute, you’ll be speaking their language. If you have cold, hard facts when it comes to numbers and how much money the marketing department is bringing into the company, the CEO can no longer deny the value of marketing.
Communicate marketing results throughout the business
Constantly showing your CEO the creative work the marketing team has done can feel a lot like showing your Mum every time you tidied your room. One key way to help convince the CEO that marketing is a worthy investment is by not only showing them but by showing all areas of the business.
If you have a central point that all areas of the business can access, such as an Intranet or an employee forum, make sure you provide weekly marketing ROI updates. If you have some particularly successful metrics you want to shout about, do it here – if a campaign or piece of content has helped one recruiter or team in particular, it’s likely they’ll respond to your post. Increasing engagement within the business will catch your CEO’s eye.
Particularly if the salespeople are the ones thanking you!
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